by Chris Carter
Hunter kept silent, his eyes holding Claire’s.
‘If I tell you where to find her, what information will you send my way?’
Hunter’s eyes narrowed. ‘Are you serious?’
She studied him for a second. ‘Dead serious.’
‘Have some decency, Claire. She’s just a girl, and she’s probably scared shitless. I’m just asking you to do the right thing.’
‘If you rub my back, I’ll rub yours.’ A whisper of seduction in her voice. ‘Nothing in this world is free. At least not the good things.’ She gave Hunter the same inviting wink she’d given him the first time they met.
‘Her life could be in danger.’
No reaction.
‘You don’t give a shit, do you?’
‘A lot of people die every day in this city, Robert. It’s a fact of life. We can’t save everyone.’
‘But we can help this girl. That’s all I’m asking.’
‘And all I’m asking is for something in return.’
Hunter’s cell phone went off. He held Claire’s gaze for a tense moment.
‘Aren’t you gonna answer that?’ she asked, conscious that heads were starting to turn.
Hunter reached into his jacket pocket. ‘Detective Hunter.’
‘Detective, it’s Monica.’ A quick pause. ‘I mean, Mollie.’ She sounded like she was crying.
Hunter turned away from Claire. ‘Are you OK? Where are you?’ he asked, but the only reply he got was static noise. He quickly covered the mouthpiece with his hand and looked back at the reporter. ‘You’re wrong, Claire—’ getting up, he placed five twenty-dollar bills on the table ‘—there’re a lot of good things in this world that are free.’
Eighty-Six
Hunter covered the twenty-five miles between Beverly Hills and South Gate in record time. Mollie had told him she’d be waiting in a coffee shop called Café Kashmir in Tweedy Boulevard. Hunter didn’t need the address; he knew the place.
After parking his Buick just outside, Hunter entered the café. At 10:35 p.m., it surprised him how busy it was. Even more surprising was that all of the customers seemed to be younger than twenty-five. Mollie was sitting at a round table by a terracotta-brick wall adorned with several oil paintings – a young artist’s exposition. A small rucksack sat by her feet.
‘Hello,’ he said, smiling as he joined her. She tried to mirror it but failed. The sleepless night and apprehension showed on her face. Telltale dark circles. Bloodshot eyes. Flushed cheeks. She closed the notebook she was scribbling on and put it away.
‘You write?’
Mollie looked embarrassed. ‘Ah, it’s nothing. Children’s stories.’
Hunter sat down. ‘When I was young I dreamed of becoming a writer someday.’
‘Really?’
‘I loved reading so much that it seemed only natural.’
Mollie looked at her rucksack where she’d just stuffed her notebook. ‘Me too.’
‘Were you thinking of going away?’
‘I made a mistake coming to Los Angeles.’ Her voice was firm, but it lacked conviction.
‘Do you think if you’d gone someplace else you would’ve avoided the visions?’ Hunter asked.
No answer. No eye contact.
Hunter let the moment pass. ‘I’m hungry,’ he said, turning to look at the cake display on the counter. ‘I’d love some cheesecake or something. How about you?’
Mollie looked unsure.
‘C’mon. I feel really guilty eating cake by myself. Just to keep me company. What do you say? How about a slice of that chocolate one?’ He pointed to a chocolate gateau on the top shelf of the display.
She hesitated for an instant before nodding. ‘OK.’
‘Hot chocolate?’ He gestured towards the empty mug on the table.
‘Yes.’
A minute later Hunter returned with two slices of cake, a coffee and a hot chocolate. As Mollie stirred her drink, Hunter noticed that her fingernails had been chewed to the nail beds.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, fidgeting with her teaspoon.
‘You’ve got nothing to be sorry about.’
‘The woman I talked to. I didn’t know she was a reporter. She said she was working with you. I never told her I was a psychic. You’ve gotta believe me.’
‘I believe you, and it’s not your fault,’ he replied in a serene tone. ‘Unfortunately, this city is full of people who will do anything to try and get ahead. I’m the one who’s sorry for exposing you like that. I should’ve known better.’
Hunter retrieved a brand-new cell phone from his pocket and handed it to Mollie. He explained that his and Garcia’s number were already programmed into it and the phone had the latest GPS chip. It was the easiest way for them to keep in contact. She promised never to turn it off.
‘The photo in the paper,’ she said after a short silence. ‘I’m scared someone might recognize me.’
Hunter picked up on her fear. ‘And maybe tell your father?’
Unconsciously, she ran her right hand over her left arm.
‘Did he do that to you?’
She looked up with questioning eyes.
‘The broken arm?’ Hunter nodded at her arm.
‘How did you know?’
‘Just observation, really,’ he said with a subtle head shake.
She looked at her arm and at the minor irregular curvature just past her elbow. When she spoke, her voice carried a mixture of anger and sadness. ‘He beat me up almost every day.’
Hunter listened while Mollie told him about the beatings. The broken arm and fingers. And the never-ending hate her father had for her, simply because she was born a girl. She told him how much she missed her mother and how her father blamed her for her death. She still never told Hunter about the sexual abuse. She didn’t have to.
Hunter clenched his hands as he thought of the many psychological scars and how they’d affect Mollie for the rest of her life.
‘I know you’re scared, Mollie. But running away isn’t the answer. It never is.’
‘It’s the only answer I have,’ she shot back. ‘You don’t know what it’s like. You don’t know what it’s been like.’ Her voice urgent. ‘My father will never give up.’
‘I’m not trying to tell you what to do, Mollie,’ Hunter said in an even voice.
‘So don’t.’
Hunter regarded her. Her reaction had been generated by fear, not anger. The same fear that made her run away and kept her running. The same fear that seemed to fuel her existence.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you angry.’
Mollie took a deep breath and looked down at her mug. A whole minute passed before Hunter spoke.
‘You sounded very worried on the phone, Mollie. Did something happen?’
‘I had another vision,’ she announced quickly and in a steady voice.
Hunter leaned forward.
‘After I saw my picture in the paper this morning I panicked. I wanted to run away again.’ She pointed to the rucksack at her feet. ‘I made it all the way to the Greyhound Bus Station.’
‘Where would you go?’
Mollie coughed a laugh. ‘Anywhere the little money I had could take me. I didn’t care. I just wanted to get away from here.’
‘And the vision changed your mind?’ Hunter asked.
Mollie nodded and started fidgeting with the teaspoon again. ‘It happened while I was at the station, trying to decide where to go.’
‘What did you see?’
Her eyes met his and Hunter saw fear.
‘The visions, since they came back, are very different from the ones I had when I was younger.’
‘You said they’re now in the first person and sometimes they aren’t silent anymore.’ Hunter nodded.
‘What I saw today wasn’t a person or a place or anything like that. It didn’t play like a film. But I know it was something very important to the killer.’
Hunter waited.
‘I saw a dat
e.’
He craned his neck. ‘What date?’
Mollie took a deep breath and shuddered. ‘New Year’s Day.’
Eighty-Seven
Garcia picked Hunter up at 7:00 a.m.
After a marathon of phone calls the night before, Mrs. Adams, Gardena High School’s librarian, had agreed to meet them at the school at 7:30.
‘I found Mollie,’ Hunter said as Garcia joined Hollywood Freeway heading northwest.
The statement caught Garcia by surprise, and he glanced at Hunter. ‘What, really? How?’
‘Actually, she found me. She called me last night.’
‘What did she say? Where is she?’
‘It took some convincing, but I booked her a room at the Travel Inn just a few blocks from my apartment.’
‘You booked her a room? Is she OK?’ Garcia asked, concerned.
‘She’s scared. She was about to run away.’
‘Where to?’
Hunter tilted his head. ‘Anywhere but here.’
Garcia thought about it for a moment. ‘Because of the newspaper article?’
Hunter nodded. ‘She told me a little bit more about herself last night. She was abused in every possible way. She’s terrified her father will find her.’
‘How can you guarantee she won’t run away from us again?’
‘I can’t. But I’m earning her trust.’
Garcia knew no one who inspired trust more than Hunter.
‘I gave her a prepaid cell phone. Our numbers are programmed in and it’s equipped with GPS. I told her never to turn it off.’
They hit heavy traffic as they merged into Harbor Freeway.
‘She had another vision.’
Garcia stared at Hunter in anticipation. ‘A new victim?’
A quick head shake and Garcia let out a relieved breath. ‘What did she see this time?’
Hunter ran through everything Mollie had told him the night before. Traffic started to ooze through, but Garcia didn’t notice.
‘New Year’s Day? What does it mean?’
‘I’m not sure, but Mollie was certain it meant something to the killer. Something important.’
‘Maybe it’s when the killer plans to strike again,’ Garcia ventured.
Hunter closed his eyes and massaged his forehead. ‘Or the day he plans to end it. Maybe it means that they’ll all be dead by New Year’s Day.’
‘All? How many is all?’
‘I’m not sure, but whatever she meant by New Year’s Day, it doesn’t give us much time.’
‘Nine days, to be exact.’
Hunter understood and shared Garcia’s frustration. So far they had nothing concrete, no real leads, just suppositions based on the little they knew and the visions of a seventeen-year-old girl.
Angry drivers sounded their horns. Garcia inched his car forward.
‘Did she see any reasoning behind any of this? Why the killer is going after these people? Anything to do with the schools or the students at all?’
A quick head shake.
They drove the rest of the way in silence.
Eighty-Eight
Hunter and Garcia arrived at Gardena High fifteen minutes late.
Mrs. Adams was a plump, cheery-looking woman of almost sixty with perfectly coiffed silver hair and a heartwarming smile. She was glad to help and directed both detectives to an archives room filled with storage boxes at the back of the library.
‘The boxes are all labeled by year.’ Mrs. Adams’s voice was as sweet as her pale green eyes.
Hunter turned to her. She was almost a foot shorter than him. ‘Thank you very much for your kindness, Mrs. Adams. We’ll be OK now.’
She hesitated at the door.
‘We won’t make a mess.’ Hunter smiled. ‘I promise.’
‘If you need me, I’ll be in the main library floor.’ She closed the door behind her.
From a folder he’d brought with him, Hunter retrieved the picture of the four girls Garcia had gotten from the old storage room the day before. He placed it on a large table in the center of the room. He also retrieved the male photograph they’d found on the fireplace in the house in Malibu. If the second victim had been a student in Gardena High, there was a chance so had the first one.
‘This was taken in 1985.’ Hunter pointed to the girls’ photo. ‘Let’s include that year and go two above and one below – from ’84 to ’87.’
Garcia frowned.
‘Just because these girls hung out together doesn’t necessarily mean they were in the same class,’ Hunter explained.
They pulled the relevant boxes out of the shelves and it didn’t take them long to find four black and white thirty-six- by twenty-four-millimeter photographs of the graduating classes. Hunter started at the top, class of ’87, the year Amanda Reilly would’ve graduated if she hadn’t dropped out of school. There were a hundred and twenty-six tightly packed students in the photo.
Using a magnifying glass, he took his time jumping from the graduating photo to the girls and the unidentified first victim one, comparing every face until he was sure.
Nothing.
He moved on to the next picture, and the slow, comparing process started again. Twenty-five frustrating minutes later, Hunter struck gold.
‘I found her.’
‘Who?’ Garcia looked up excitedly.
‘Our victim number two.’ Hunter turned the picture around and pointed to a girl hidden behind two quarterback-looking boys on the second to last line of students. Only her face was visible.
Garcia used his magnifying glass, his eyes bouncing between pictures. ‘It’s her alright.’
Hunter consulted the name sheet attached to the back of the photo. ‘Her name’s Debbie Howard.’ He quickly got on the phone to Hopkins with the news, asking him to dig out everything he could on Miss Howard.
It took Garcia another twenty-five minutes to find the first of the remaining two girls – Emily Wells, class of ’84. Fifteen minutes later Hunter spotted the last one – Jessica Pierce, class of ’85. They’d been through all the pictures as thoroughly as they could. Victim number one wasn’t in any of them. They were both very sure of it.
Emily Wells and Jessica Pierce’s names were immediately passed on to Hopkins and the Investigative Analysis Unit.
‘Find them,’ was all Hunter said.
Eighty-Nine
The address they had for Patricia Reed, Father Fabian’s old algebra 2 teacher, was in Pomona, the fifth-largest city in Los Angeles County and home to the famous California State Polytechnic University (Cal Poly). In stop-and-go traffic, the drive from Gardena Senior High took them an hour and a half.
Minnequa Drive was a quiet street about ten minutes away from Cal Poly, and they had no problem finding the building they were looking for. Modern in style and set back from the street, the large two-story house was fronted by several perfectly trimmed hedges, a small patch of grass to the left and a two-car garage to the right. A black Dodge Journey was parked in the lavish black-and-white-checked paved driveway.
‘Wow, this is quite a nice retirement home,’ Garcia said, parking on the street in front of the house. ‘Nice ride too.’
They climbed the railed granite steps that led to the front door and rang the bell. After a few moments it was answered by a diminutive, wiry Mexican woman in her thirties dressed in a uniform like a hotel maid’s. Her black hair was bundled tightly under a hairnet.
‘Good morning,’ Hunter said with a pleasant smile, quickly returning his badge to his pocket. He knew from experience that many private house workers in LA were illegal immigrants. A police badge only causes them to panic. ‘We’re looking for Mrs. Reed.’
‘Mista Reed?’ the maid replied in heavy accented English, returning the smile.
‘No, no. Mrs. Reed. Patricia Reed.’
‘Ah. No hay. No Mrs. Reed.’
‘What do you mean, no Mrs. Reed? She isn’t home?’
‘No. Ella se ha ido para siempre.’
; Hunter frowned. ‘She’s gone forever?’
‘What’s the problem, Emilia?’ A man in his early forties dressed in a gray pinstripe wool suit with a light blue tab-collar shirt and a blue-on-blue striped tie appeared at the end of the entrance hall. He was tall, well built and movie-star handsome, with dark blue eyes and a strong, squared jaw.
The maid turned to face him. ‘Creo que estos señores están en busca de su madre, Mr. Reed.’
‘Esta bien, Emilia, tranquilo. I’ll talk to them.’ He motioned her to go back to her duties.
‘Good morning, gentlemen. I’m James Reed,’ the man said as he got to the door. ‘Can I help you?’
‘I understand by what Emilia said that Patricia Reed is your mother?’ Hunter asked in a polite tone.
‘I thought you said you didn’t understand Spanish,’ Garcia said under his breath.
‘Patricia Reed was my mother. She passed away five months ago.’
‘We’re sorry to hear that. We didn’t know.’
‘What’s this about, gentlemen?’
Hunter and Garcia introduced themselves, going over the customary badge-displaying ritual.
‘We were hoping to ask her a few questions about one of her old students from Compton High,’ Hunter said.
A look of interest came over Reed’s face. ‘What year are you talking about?’
‘1984, 1985?’
‘I was a student at Compton High in ’84. It was my freshman year. I graduated in 1987.’
‘Really?’ Hunter’s interest grew. ‘Would you mind looking at some pictures for us? Maybe you might remember them.’
Reed checked his watch and screwed up his face. ‘I’m a professor at Cal Poly. I’m due in class soon. I’ve got only about an hour before I have to leave. Could you come back later this evening, maybe?’
‘It shouldn’t take more than ten, fifteen minutes max,’ Hunter pressed.
‘I’ve got some papers I still have to go over. I have very little time.’
‘It’s very important, Mr. Reed,’ Hunter stated.
Reed studied both men before relenting. ‘Please come in,’ he said, showing them inside.
